Read Online Love Is the Higher Law by David Levithan - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: David Levithan
Tags: Fiction
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dream cloud. The least I can do is let him have that.
It’s only when I get to the front door that I put on my shoes. I unlock the security bolts and take the spare key. This is new territory for me—I never sneak out. But this thing—this thing that’s happening—has made me not care what I normally do. Sneaking out now doesn’t have to mean that I’m used to it, or that I’ll ever do it again. It’s what this specific moment calls for.
I close the door and walk down the hallway, my steps as silent as the walls. No one is watching TV at this hour. No one is arguing. If there are sleepwalkers, they hide their presence the same way I do. Once I’m out the door, I realize I should have left a note. But it’s too late. I need to keep going.
I don’t have a watch on or a phone with me, so I don’t know what time it is. 2:18, 3:12, 3:45, 4:06 —what’s the difference, really? I walk outside and it’s absolute night, not yet softened by the coming of the day. There is some reassurance in the fact that the streetlamps are still working and the air is, at least temporarily, less caustic as I inhale. I wonder if the storm has put out the fires at Ground Zero or if this is only a pause before the smoke from below reaches back into the sky. It is too dark and too distant for me to see if the plumes are still there. On Eighteenth Street you can’t see much farther than Eighteenth Street. When a cab drives by, I’m almost grateful for the sign of life.
Crossing Third Avenue, I start to see people. Not many, buta few. This is not a late-night crowd. These are not people coming home from bars or clubs. Nor are they workers coming home from a graveyard shift. I can tell: These are people like me. The relocated. They have not been sleeping in their own beds. They are wrecked by the devastating side effects of such helplessness, most notably insomnia. They might be tourists stranded in hotels. There are some, I have no doubt, who are still looking for the missing, still clutching the thinnest available hope. I don’t make eye contact with them. I’m afraid of their stories. That’s what it’s been like lately—we have the ability to glimpse each other as souls. Damaged, frightened, confused, caring souls.
The posters—all those homemade posters—are sagging under the weight of the rain. The words bleed as the damp paper pulls against the Scotch tape. The posters around telephone poles have shaped themselves to the wood, the old staples showing through like scars. Others have fallen face-first onto the sidewalk, or have been carried into clogged gutters. Nobody was thinking of rain. Nobody would have waited the extra hour to make the posters waterproof. The words that remain intact are the biggest ones, the ones you’d most expect—MISSING and HAVE YOU SEEN ME? It’s the photos and the phone numbers that have lost their focus. If you look at them with your naked eye, it’s like you’re seeing them through tears. They have the same kind of blur.
I was going to walk aimlessly, one direction as good as any other, but now I want to go to Union Square. If I can’t go home,I’ll go there. Seeing the rain-ruined posters, I want to turn my wandering into a pilgrimage. I want to see the shrine. I want to go back to see all the candles and portraits and banners and notes. For the past three days, people have been going to Union Square to mourn and pray, leaving their remembrances alongside everyone else’s. I have no idea who put the first candle down, which strangers first gathered and named it a gathering place. I went there on Wednesday morning because I saw other people were going there, and ever since, I haven’t been able to come back to Ted and Lia’s apartment without stopping there first. It’s what I need. Even in the middle of the night, even (especially) when I’m alone. Every inch of it is heartbreaking, and that’s what I want to do right now—I want to break my own heart.
“It’s going to be
It’s only when I get to the front door that I put on my shoes. I unlock the security bolts and take the spare key. This is new territory for me—I never sneak out. But this thing—this thing that’s happening—has made me not care what I normally do. Sneaking out now doesn’t have to mean that I’m used to it, or that I’ll ever do it again. It’s what this specific moment calls for.
I close the door and walk down the hallway, my steps as silent as the walls. No one is watching TV at this hour. No one is arguing. If there are sleepwalkers, they hide their presence the same way I do. Once I’m out the door, I realize I should have left a note. But it’s too late. I need to keep going.
I don’t have a watch on or a phone with me, so I don’t know what time it is. 2:18, 3:12, 3:45, 4:06 —what’s the difference, really? I walk outside and it’s absolute night, not yet softened by the coming of the day. There is some reassurance in the fact that the streetlamps are still working and the air is, at least temporarily, less caustic as I inhale. I wonder if the storm has put out the fires at Ground Zero or if this is only a pause before the smoke from below reaches back into the sky. It is too dark and too distant for me to see if the plumes are still there. On Eighteenth Street you can’t see much farther than Eighteenth Street. When a cab drives by, I’m almost grateful for the sign of life.
Crossing Third Avenue, I start to see people. Not many, buta few. This is not a late-night crowd. These are not people coming home from bars or clubs. Nor are they workers coming home from a graveyard shift. I can tell: These are people like me. The relocated. They have not been sleeping in their own beds. They are wrecked by the devastating side effects of such helplessness, most notably insomnia. They might be tourists stranded in hotels. There are some, I have no doubt, who are still looking for the missing, still clutching the thinnest available hope. I don’t make eye contact with them. I’m afraid of their stories. That’s what it’s been like lately—we have the ability to glimpse each other as souls. Damaged, frightened, confused, caring souls.
The posters—all those homemade posters—are sagging under the weight of the rain. The words bleed as the damp paper pulls against the Scotch tape. The posters around telephone poles have shaped themselves to the wood, the old staples showing through like scars. Others have fallen face-first onto the sidewalk, or have been carried into clogged gutters. Nobody was thinking of rain. Nobody would have waited the extra hour to make the posters waterproof. The words that remain intact are the biggest ones, the ones you’d most expect—MISSING and HAVE YOU SEEN ME? It’s the photos and the phone numbers that have lost their focus. If you look at them with your naked eye, it’s like you’re seeing them through tears. They have the same kind of blur.
I was going to walk aimlessly, one direction as good as any other, but now I want to go to Union Square. If I can’t go home,I’ll go there. Seeing the rain-ruined posters, I want to turn my wandering into a pilgrimage. I want to see the shrine. I want to go back to see all the candles and portraits and banners and notes. For the past three days, people have been going to Union Square to mourn and pray, leaving their remembrances alongside everyone else’s. I have no idea who put the first candle down, which strangers first gathered and named it a gathering place. I went there on Wednesday morning because I saw other people were going there, and ever since, I haven’t been able to come back to Ted and Lia’s apartment without stopping there first. It’s what I need. Even in the middle of the night, even (especially) when I’m alone. Every inch of it is heartbreaking, and that’s what I want to do right now—I want to break my own heart.
“It’s going to be
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